


Seraphim

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Chess Metaphors, Multi, Platonic Romance, The British Isles, The Nordics, Unrequited Love, West Europe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:52:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood."<br/>-Edgar Allen Poe </p><p>Europe at war, struck by the throne of Imperial Prussia. Kingdoms have fallen.<br/>In the shadows rises the knight named America; 'Little Prince'. To vanquish the night that has dawned on Europe.<br/>The King of England, Arthur, had vanished long ago, foretelling he would arise again when he was needed.<br/>Never has need been so great.<br/>The Prince and the Rising King.<br/>The Seraphim of the world's darkest hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seraphim

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! First time posting Hetalia on this site, so please wish me luck!  
> I was inspired by the CardVerse Hetalia and Arthurian Folklore, and decided 'to hell with it; I'll do ChessVerse'.  
> As the story unravels, you'll see why this is relevant.  
> Anyways, enjoy! 
> 
> DigiRez

“... And a most curious country it was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook.  
I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere--and so there are!' she added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over the world--if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is!”  
-Lewis Carroll 'Alice In Wonderland'

* * *

 

"My liege."  
His face is taut, his eyes are blue, and the thick swathe of blonde hair atop his head is neatly settled into a mane of straw-colored locks. Chain-mail clinks together softly as he kneels, a toned arm swept around a leg. Sir Mathias Køhler of Denmark- the famed viking and glorious knight, kneeling before the Austrian-Hungarian king?  
The kingdom has fallen. He is certain of it, before the words even come from the handsome knight's lips, before any such motion is given to him to speak. It is a way of intuition and of sight beyond the present in which he arrives at the conclusion- despairingly- that his kingdom is no more.  
The mercenary knight tips his head up, catching the king's meticulous brown eyes with his own blue. The standard shade of Nordic blue, alight with the aftermath of battle and the nobility of bloodbath.  
"Your empire is no more, Your Majesty, and for that I am truly sorry. We engaged the enemy with every iota of strength, but they outnumbered and outmatched us severely. Nothing could have been done, if I may be so bold."  
The king rises, staring with enraged, carefully controlled eyes, trying to inflict bleeding wounds onto this shimmering visage of a knight who was no more sorry than he was royalty.  
"You are no longer required. Please, do find somewhere other than here in which to occupy your time." His words are toxic, scaling up the knight's vulnerable form in wreathes of anger.  
"Yes, my li- Ah, King Roderich." There is a tenseness now to either man, stiff gestures of formality- though graceful, they are hollow. Cold and decaying gestures. The Danish knight taps his palm to the pommel of his sword, stands on point, and quits the chamber.  
The Austrian man gasps. His hands rise to console his temples, a sharp spike of agony erupting in the back of his mind. His kingdom was lost.  
And all of the hard-pressed valiance that faced off the adversing army on the borders had been for naught. The tremendous will of mind and that of tactical skill exceeding precedent that had been used to preserve Vienna from holocaust. The mass panic spreading like disease across Europe. It had affected his cities, he knew, and they had gone down in glorious spurts of fire that tore down his lovely architecture- the outcome of hundreds of years of spine-numbing labor. So now he was left with little other than his steadfast pride, a broken, useless throne adorned with dulling gems, and the shattered remains of Vienna, against the overwhelming army of enemies, slicing into his capital. His radiant capital of his radiant empire of Austria-Hungary.  
Even Hungary could not suppress the opposition; no longer. He had reared from the murk of his rage, with men like mountains, with resources abound. Cornucopias of weapons, bountiful stores of food. Infinite cavalrymen abreast great hulking steeds. The lush colors of a thousand banners, black and crystalline white, a raven as dark as pitch with majestic, lustrous wings bared, sewn into each.  
Suffocation clawed at his throat in the form of the lush velvet collar he wore, connected to the flowing lines of his thick kingly robe- plum velvet, in the sunlight the tips of the fabric burning carmine. His hair toppled down around him, cool and dry, as if trying to tickle feeling back into him. He had gambled. It had been foolish, he knew, he gnashed his teeth and closed his eyes, yet he had still played the game. He knew what the price would be, to keep the blade from biting into his neck, but he nearly couldn't bear to think of it. Not now, in the fresh wound of defeat that cratered his conscious.  
He had lost.

* * *

 

_Checkmate._   
_That was fun; shall we play again?_   
  


* * *

 

His homeland was much nicer than the empire of his employment.  
It had been agonizing to stay away from his brothers for so long- only satiated by the wondrous charm of battle- and to play the unbefitting role of Sir Mathias. Oh, how snobbish the Austrian-Hungarians were, how highborn they thought themselves, conceited in the filth of a Europe reaching critical population mass. All the while, Russia snarled at them from behind his frosty barricade and vast expansionary territory; Siberia.  
Mathias rid himself of the gloom in his mind, rubbing a calloused palm against the nape of his neck. The armor he was adorned in- the crest of Denmark sitting, blazing, on his breastplate, and the chain-mail beneath, of a million forged Dannebrog- were weighing heavily on him as though passing physicality and dropping like lodestones on his psyche.  
He couldn't wait to see Lukas.  
But there was something else, there, too, something farther back and hidden away- like a child's toy, stowed aside and forgotten. Yet not entirely forgotten.  
 _Prussia_.  
His might had expanded exponentially in a very short few years, enigmatically, and then quelled when war broke out. In a sense, he had reached his climax in foot soldiers and cavalrymen, and had ultimately decided to put them to good use.  
He had preserved his brother, as Norway had predicted he would, and the rest of Germany was left quite content and quite alone, while his brother ran about to do war. While the rest of Europe was extricated into this turmoil and bloodshed, decay of famine and war-talk spreading about as fleas do in summer. Through Germany, Prussia had inadvertently saved the kingdom of Denmark. Germany was in no position to condone Prussia's aggressive stretches, so he denied his brother any further advancement into their shared country. The state of Prussia had known limitation. Curled lip revealing bared teeth, the Prussian imperials had consented and left the Danish peninsula alone under Germany's good relations. As soon as it broke, Mathias knew he was going to be overtaken the night of. There was never any question when it came to the awesome power of Prussia. Denmark's personification shook his head aggressively, and while doing so he recognized the fat drops of an oncoming rainstorm falling about his armor- streams of wet lucency.  
Sweden would not be at all pleased with the Dane- as if it truly mattered- and neither would Norway, come to think of it, for his absence. But that was alright, as long as the Swede hadn't tried joining monarchies with Norway in the time aloft. Again. He had hired himself out as a mercenary many times before. Usually as it was for a position of a knight, some kingdoms were actually foolish enough to put him in a war-room and expect him to be a tactician. Mathias was no such man. Denmark had sprouted and flourished off of the admittedly primeval but rather traditional ways of Vikings- that meant he liked to charge into battle with axe in palm better than to idly fret about regiments and legions of faceless men moving about a field, sword in sheath.  
Iceland would most likely be off, sheltered and quiet in his home, far from the troubles of a turbulent mainland.  
That, and the other isle just south from the Nordics. Mathias couldn't quite remember the other country's names yet, but knew there were three brothers sharing the sliver of island just across the Channel from France. The names were a bit muddled in his mind, as he had other more drastic things to attend to, but they came about slowly- like clarity of thought after a bought of alcohol.  
Ireland and Scotland took up most of the isle, while soft-voiced, kind Wales had most of the southern end. It rain incessantly there, Denmark remembered. He also recalled vaguely, that there used to be a fourth brother. Named Arthur, perhaps. The information was scattered microscopically inside his head. It made him shiver, the thought of the country simply vanishing one day- leaving his brothers saddened and astonished and unsure of how to proceed. Arthur, he thought, as it began to piece back together with the sudden conscious attention, was the presiding 'elder brother' of the isle nations. Scotland was taller, Ireland louder, and Wales more deftly talented and elusive than all three (especially when it came to matters of the social sort), but England as he was called, had an air of 'special' about him. Just the faint twinkle of unspeakable knowledge lurking in the green pallor of his eyes, the wisp of pride that lanced through the Englishman's body as he stood- spine erect and straight, shoulders firm, lips quivering in some form of charming knowing. He was well-spoken, gentlemanly, able to conduct himself and his army without strain. He handled the burden of a nation as if it were a vapid business nestling abound his shoulders.  
And he had absconded shortly after he began his rule as King of England- shortly, to the eyes of a nation, after a lifetime, in the eyes of the perishable humanity- without so much as a clue as to where he'd gone. No one wanted to step on the unsure ground of the topic after that, so when the other nations of the isle moved to monopolize England's once large sum of land, no one dared to interfere.  
Denmark snorted, trying to wipe the sudden change of topic from his mind. The clandestine affairs of a young and brash country so long ago were of no matter to him, not any longer.

 


End file.
